Environmental Humanities

The Environmental Humanities is an emerging, multidisciplinary field that explores the entangled relationships among human culture and the wider biotic world. As “Humanities” implies, the emphasis is on the artistic, philosophical, linguistic, and cultural resources communities use to imagine what nature is, where it is to be found, and our proper relationship with it. If the Environmental Sciences investigate the material factors that contribute to our ecological crisis, the Environmental Humanities explore, in transformative dialogue with the sciences, the aesthetic, imaginative, cultural, religious, and ethical components that not only drive our crisis but also provide us with the tools to imagine responses to it.

The minor will be robustly interdisciplinary, with current commitments of courses from fifteen fields and academic units. It will also include engaged learning opportunities that stress civic ecology, or community-based, grassroots environmental education and action, particularly in Waco. This local engagement will rely upon partnerships already formed between faculty who have envisioned this minor and university programs and local non-profits that address food insecurity, food systems injustice, environmental degradation, and environmental injustice. Drawing upon Baylor’s unique intellectual and institutional resources, several existing and envisioned classes will also ask how religious communities and traditions can be both critiqued and constructively engaged on issues of environmental consciousness and action. 

Most degree programs at Baylor do not require a student to select a minor area of study, but students may choose to minor in a field that supplements their major or may choose to pursue an area of academic interest completely outside their major. For example, an Environmental Studies major may choose to minor in Environmental Humanities to supplement their major. 

For more information: Environmental Humanities